(recording available: like-strangers-like-lost-friends )
read on for the words.
i saw you across the room, looking relaxed, comfortable, and cloaked in life. i wasn’t sure it was you at first, but only because your eyes were so blank when they met mine. no recognition, no remembrance, nothing to indicate there was ever anything between us but the distance of the room and all of life.
it confused me, i admit. i lowered my eyes and actually thought perhaps i was the mistaken one. reaching back into memory, drawing your face, your eyes, the things i remembered of you; the feelings, the intensity, the things i recognized of myself in you.
when i could see you so clearly there, behind my eyelids, i looked across the room again and waited for your eyes to find mine. fixing your image upon the quiet forever between us, i waited for you to look my way and place your reality there, just for a moment, so i could be sure.
i thought you would look again, that the memory would match, and somehow, suddenly, it would be as it once was. i’m a dreamer that way, i suppose.
instead, it seemed the only place that ceased to exist in the world was the small corner in which i sat. all glances, skimming past, bouncing away, doing anything but resting long enough to find me. the lines of memory skipped and blurred until i could no longer see them. i thought maybe my memories were playing tricks on me, but then i realized… i was crying.
a stranger rose from across the room, made their way to me and kindly asked, “are you alright?”
the only acceptable answer was ‘yes’. how do you tell a stranger the things that a ‘no’ would require? so awkward to tell someone all the things they don’t want to know. so rude to do it when all they want or need is to hear you manage ‘yes’.
see how normal it all is? see how fine it all is? see what wonderful friends we are? yes and yes and yes, i understand it now. kind of like a reverse groundhog day. never again to get to say anything but the acceptable, the calm and undisturbed norm. all the memories are buried — under polite masks, under the weight of reality, wrapped tight and held close so the things underneath cannot breathe enough to scream.
like strangers, who know nothing of one another, meeting for the first time. shake hands, smile, no matter all the things you know, a half-hooded look and the happy making reply, ‘yes, i am well. and you?’
like lost friends, who have been so long apart that all things shared have been forgotten. nod and smile, nod and smile, ‘so good to see you again…’ then, remember to let go the hand. not to hold it, not to kiss it, not to reach out and shake a body until it can’t forget how it felt when once it shook.
i looked up to you, a stranger, a million miles away, a lifetime away, and i nodded. and i smiled. and i said, ‘yes, i am fine. it’s nothing.’
and you nodded. and you smiled. and you let go my hand.